Notable: The band, originally named Gold Mind Squad, was courted by major labels but never signed. After a lineup change, the group decided to stop trying to imitate what was on the radio and draw from its own influences instead. The result is the new album The Dawn of Addiction, which comes out early next month.

Quotable: "We just decided we're good musicians, we can play our instruments well, let's just go down and write a record that is exactly what our influences are,"" Bryant said. "Let's write a record that we want to play. We just went in our basement and wrote a whole record that is everything we wanted to do."